Relentless

by Robin Parrish

  Craning his neck around those before him, he saw that the panel of buttons was activated by a keycard. As expected. Several of the buttons were already lit up, indicating which floors the car would stop on. But his destination—the floor with Carl MacDugall’s office on it—wasn’t one of them.

  ‘‘Um . . .’’ Grant offering his best embarrassed fumble, ‘‘Could you hit sixteen, please?’’

  The man closest to the panel of buttons turned in surprise. His refined, tailored ensemble stood in stark contrast to Grant’s loud coveralls, which he did not fail to notice, offering Grant a quick look up and down. With distaste, he turned back to face the sliding doors.

  He pressed the button marked ‘‘16’’ with a pronounced sigh.

  Grant breathed a silent sigh of his own, working hard to relax his raging pulse. He ran through his plan once more as the elevator moved up. Julie remained silent in his headpiece, but he could hear her misgivings beneath the dead air.

  He knew what she was afraid of. Breaking and entering was one thing. But what if MacDugall refused to talk? Was Grant capable of doing what he must to make the man talk?

  Guess we’ll find out.

  The elevator chimed and he exited into a pristine hallway fit for Caesar, complete with ornately-carved Roman pillars. A secretarial pool faced him; most of the desks were empty from the shift change. A few half-glances were cast in his direction from the handful of employees still there, but otherwise no one seemed to take notice of him.

  ‘‘The hall to your right,’’ Julie said in his ear, though he remembered where to go. A spacious assistant’s office at the end of the hall would lead into the vast corner office of Carl MacDugall, chief executive officer.

  But he was looking for something else. ‘‘Which door is it?’’ he whispered, then smiled pleasantly at a woman emerging from a rest room on the right.

  ‘‘Should be the fourth one on your left,’’ Julie answered. ‘‘Assuming they haven’t remodeled since the date on these floor plans.’’

  That’s a comforting thought.

  The door she directed him to wasn’t labeled. There was no way to tell if it was the right one.

  But he had no other options. With a deep breath—and a quick glance to both sides to make sure no one was observing him closely— he put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.

  To his surprise, it opened. Inside was a lavishly equipped conference room, its centerpiece an oblong mahogany table surrounded by sixteen leather chairs. Doors were situated on either end of the long room, leading sideways into other rooms. He marched to the closest door on his right and opened it.

  The next room was a plush office, with more mahogany fixtures, shelves on all of the walls, a flamboyant, hand-carved wooden desk, an old fashioned banker’s-style desk lamp, and a burgundy wingback chair. The chair was swiveled in Grant’s direction, as if waiting for him. In it sat an elderly fellow who could only be Carl MacDugall.

  Streaks of silver defined his perfectly groomed head of hair, along with a navy blue pinstripe suit, manicured nails, and black loafers so shiny Grant found it hard to look directly at them. His brown eyes were sunken deep. He clutched at his pants with one hand yet gave off an appearance of being thoroughly unmoved by Grant’s entrance.

  ‘‘Mr. MacDugall, I hope you’ll forgive the unexpected entrance,’’ he began, wasting no time, ‘‘but my name is Grant Borrows. Do you know who I am?’’

  MacDugall looked him in the eye but hesitated, as if trying to decide what to say.

  ‘‘No,’’ he grunted, his eyes still locked on Grant. He wasn’t panicking, he was barely even reacting.

  This is very, very wrong.

  ‘‘How about Collin Boyd?’’ Grant tried again, approaching the desk. ‘‘Ever heard that name?’’

  ‘‘I’m afraid not, young man,’’ MacDugall replied, but quickly gave a furtive glance in the direction of his secretary’s outer office.

  Uh-oh.

  ‘‘You shouldn’t be here,’’ the elder man said suddenly.

  Grant ran for the receptionist’s door. ‘‘You knew I was coming!’’ he cried. ‘‘Who’s out there, security?’’

  He flung the door open, frustration overwhelming all sense of caution.

  He froze.

  ‘‘What do you see?’’ Julie said breathlessly from his earpiece. ‘‘Who is it?’’

  13

  San Diego’s coolest winds of the year blew hard across the harbor against the Thresher and his motorcycle, tempting it from the road. But he was undeterred. Distractions were pointless.

  He had an appointment with an old contact. It had taken days to track her down. In the end, he found her at an art studio that catered to a rather eclectic clientele.

  Which was perfectly in keeping with what he knew about her.

  ‘‘Everyone’s buzzin’, man,’’ said Lilly, the girl with the paintbrush and palette, adding a flourish of green to her work. ‘‘I don’t know who started it, but just last night, more’n once I heard, ‘Someone’s come, someone who can protect us.’ ’’

  She looked completely different from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was pink and purple, her nose and ears were filled with rings, and one arm bore dozens of plastic charm bracelets.

  ‘‘Us?’’ he asked her, even though he knew the answer.

  ‘‘Us, man,’’ she said, as if it were obvious. She splashed yellow and orange in furious swings of her brush. In the three minutes since he had found her, Lilly had taken a four-foot-wide canvas and turned it into an impressionist vista of the Santa Ana mountains. It was so breathtakingly beautiful, even he was taken with it.

  ‘‘Why do you need protecting?’’ he asked idly, studying her work.

  ‘‘I gotta gift, dude,’’ Lilly gestured toward her canvas. ‘‘People hate anyone who’s different. Tell me you don’t know this.’’

  The Thresher watched as she added magnificent, stringlike clouds over the painting’s sunset, mixing gorgeous shades of light red, teal, and a deep purplish tone.

  ‘‘This man who will protect you, who is he?’’

  ‘‘Never said it was a guy,’’ she teased, turning to look at him for the first time. ‘‘Don’t start in with the chauvinist male superiority crap. Because I will ditch you right here and now . . .’’

  He stepped forward and pressed a wad of greenbacks into her hand.

  She offered a fake wounded expression for a moment, but then grinned. ‘‘They call him Borrows. Friend of mine told me everyone’s talking ‘Borrows this’ and ‘Borrows that’.’’

  ‘‘Fascinating,’’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘‘Liar,’’ she jabbed. ‘‘You could care less about anything but whoever you’re hunting right now.’’

  He eyed her evenly. Watched her sign her initials to the fresh painting and set the used canvas aside for a fresh one.

  ‘‘Why do you help me, Lilly?’’ he asked, genuinely curious. ‘‘You know who I am and what I do.’’

  ‘‘Dude, I may be gifted, but I ain’t exactly rollin’ in it. I need the bank.’’

  He resigned himself to her answer, satisfied.

  ‘‘Now when are you going to ask me what you really came to ask me?’’ she cast a quick glance over her shoulder before returning to her canvas.

  ‘‘What do you know of the Bringer?’’ he asked.

  Lilly stopped painting and turned.

  ‘‘I’ve heard the phrase. Whoever or whatever it is, rumor mill says it’s in L.A.,’’ Lilly replied, her eyes falling to his hip.

  Los Angeles . . . His mind began formulating the fastest route to the big city.

  ‘‘I see you’re still carrying that overgrown knife of yours . . .’’

  The Thresher didn’t reply, looking blandly into her eyes.

  ‘‘Thought maybe you would’ve traded up to a gun or something by now. Kill anybody with it lately?’’ she asked.

  He turned to leave.

  ‘‘It’s not for butt
ering toast, love.’’

  ‘‘Okay, you owe me big for this one,’’ Lisa huffed, marching into Daniel’s office.

  ‘‘What? Did you get something?’’ he replied, glancing up at her. He was shuffling papers, trying to find his desk, which was beneath them . . . somewhere. Probably.

  She sighed, frustrated at his lack of attention.

  ‘‘Well?’’ he prodded. He clutched another large stack of papers, opened the filing cabinet to his left, and began sorting them in.

  ‘‘Do you remember Barry?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ he replied without looking up.

  ‘‘My ex-boyfriend Barry? We went out for a year before he decided he needed a girlfriend who wasn’t smarter than him?’’

  ‘‘Still no.’’

  Lisa frowned. ‘‘He’s got a job as vault security at the bank’s main branch downtown. I had to promise the sleazeball that I’d go out with him again sometime, but he tracked down Collin Boyd’s last bank statement for me and . . . get this. Collin’s cell phone bill is still being paid. The most recent payment—four days ago—was paid by automatic debit.’’

  ‘‘How can the phone company collect from a dead man’s bank account?’’

  She smiled for the first time. ‘‘Because the payment wasn’t taken from Collin’s account. The billing was changed a week ago to an account belonging to someone else.’’

  The stack of papers fell from Daniel’s hands and fluttered across the floor, as he looked up at her.

  ‘‘Grant Borrows,’’ she grinned, enjoying his growing excitement.

  ‘‘We’ve got his name!’’ he said, breathlessly.

  ‘‘Um, hello, I got his name,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll tell you the rest, but first you have to tell me something.’’

  ‘‘Lisa . . .’’ Daniel’s eyes scanned the ceiling for nothing. ‘‘Don’t do this now . . .’’

  It wasn’t the first time she’d used her investigative skills to try and bargain her way into his past. Her growing obsession with knowing everything she could about him was something he found not only inappropriate, but annoying to the highest degree.

  When she didn’t respond, he sighed. ‘‘What is it?’’ he asked resignedly.

  ‘‘I just want to know why you do this, that’s all,’’ she said innocently, clinging tightly to a manila folder she’d just retrieved from her shoulder bag. ‘‘Why you study, well . . . what we study.’’

  ‘‘Fine,’’ he grimaced, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. ‘‘I guess it goes back to my mother.’’

  Lisa settled into the chair opposite his desk.

  ‘‘I never knew my dad. He ran out on her before I was born. And having no siblings, it was just me and Mom for my entire childhood. I had an insatiable curiosity about how things work, but it made me accident-prone—constantly sticking my fingers into electrical sockets or trying to open batteries to see the acid inside or . . . well, you get the idea. But no matter what kind of danger I fell into, I always managed to bounce back. Mom said I was just too curious and stubborn to quit learning—I had no time for anything else.

  ‘‘I was fifteen when the world changed. Mom was crossing the street on her way home—right in front of our house—when a car hit her doing fifty.’’

  Lisa gasped, yet Daniel continued his story as if giving a clinical dissertation.

  ‘‘She suffered many injuries, but it was the brain damage that proved irreparable. The doctors told me that she still had brain activity, that she was able to see and comprehend, but the part of her brain that allowed her to communicate had been damaged beyond repair. Essentially, she was still my mother ‘in there,’ in her head, but she was trapped and couldn’t express herself, couldn’t be herself.

  ‘‘I became obsessed with the human brain. I received my doctorate in neuroscience. Finding alternative ways of allowing my mother’s brain to express itself, beyond normal human interaction, became my obsession. But I went beyond the typical fields and embraced extrasensory studies in addition to my continued work on uncovering the deepest mysteries of the human brain. And I subsequently became the laughingstock of my post-graduate studies. Now will you please hand me that file?’’

  He could tell he’d surprised her. She placed the file on the desk without a word.

  He grabbed it and began scanning through it quickly. ‘‘Mm, no picture . . .’’ he muttered.

  Lisa snapped back to reality. ‘‘I couldn’t find records of any kind for anyone with the name ‘Grant Borrows’ before five days ago. No medical records. No tax history. Not even a Social Security number. It’s undoubtedly a fabricated identity.’’

  ‘‘What’s this medical discharge report? And how on earth do you get this stuff?’’

  ‘‘I know a guy who knows a guy. The Garden Grove Hospital report you have there is our biggest lead. He was treated there for various injuries the same night as the Glendale fire . . .’’

  ‘‘Let me guess,’’ Daniel interjected. ‘‘He was treated for, among other things, burns?’’

  She nodded. ‘‘Along with a minor concussion, various cuts and bruises, and a bullet wound.’’

  Daniel whistled. What kind of danger was he about to fall into?

  14

  Grant was thunderstruck. Confused, and a little dizzy.

  Staring back at him wasn’t a security guard, a policeman, or even a secretary.

  It was a woman. And likely the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Blond and cherry-lipped. Blue eyes alive with mischief. Dressed in a worker’s jumpsuit not that different from his own, though her curves shaped it into something almost trendy. Her mouth was turned up faintly, in seductive amusement.

  ‘‘I was starting to think you’d never get here,’’ she said in a slight Southern drawl.

  Her right arm was out, a gloved hand pointed at him as if a gun. But she held no weapon. She gave a click as if cocking a trigger, then slinked her way around Grant, eyes still holding his, until she was past him. At the last moment, she winked.

  She slowly walked toward MacDugall, her hand leveled at his head the entire time. ‘‘Now you be a good boy,’’ she said to the CEO, ‘‘and tell this good-lookin’ fella the same thing you told me.’’

  Grant was stupefied. It was ridiculous. Yet MacDugall was watching the woman’s every move, her every gesture, as if he fully expected her to pull the gun’s imaginary trigger any second.

  Grant shifted uncomfortably on his feet, almost feeling sorry for MacDugall.

  When MacDugall didn’t speak up, she placed the tip of her finger next to his temple.

  ‘‘O-okay, okay!’’ he said, beads of sweat visible on his forehead. ‘‘I, uh . . . I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t know you, son. But I know what’s happened to you.’’

  Grant slowly shuffled back toward the desk, his attention suddenly shifting from the beautiful woman. ‘‘Did you do this to me?’’

  MacDugall shook his head quickly, desperately. ‘‘No! I just . . .’’ He blew out a breath. ‘‘We research and develop new technologies here. Of all kinds. On a few rare occasions, we’ve done some—some highly specialized, custom research—’’

  The blond woman prodded him with her finger. ‘‘Get to the good part already.’’ She rolled her eyes impatiently.

  Who was this woman? Why was she helping him?

  ‘‘Quite some time ago, when we were a much smaller operation,’’ MacDugall said, eyes shifting like mad, ‘‘we conducted some very . . . next generation research and experimentation on behalf of a well-paying client. It was all kept very quiet, completely off the books.’’

  ‘‘What kinds of experiments?’’ Grant immediately demanded.

  ‘‘Mr. Evers, the client, asked us to develop technologies—mechanical, pharmaceutical, whatever—capable of enhancing the functions of the human body.’’

  The blond woman shot Grant a look as if this revelation vindicated her strange actions.

  ‘‘Evers . . .’’ J
ulie said thoughtfully in Grant’s ear.

  He turned his head and whispered back, ‘‘You know that name?’’

  ‘‘No, I don’t think so. Evers . . . Evers . . .’’ she repeated, as if trying to jar it free from her mind.

  ‘‘And did you succeed in your experiments?’’ the blond woman prompted.

  ‘‘No!’’ MacDugall cried. ‘‘Never! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell—’’

  Grant jumped when a blaring siren wailed out, sounding as though it had filled the entire building.

  The woman, suddenly furious, turned to MacDugall and said, ‘‘BANG!’’ He recoiled violently, as if the faux gun in her hand had shot him in the head. But before he realized the truth, she backhanded him into unconsciousness. One of his hands fell limp and Grant could see that MacDugall had pressed some kind of alarm button attached to the underside of the arm on his chair.

  It occurred to Grant that he was feeling the same way he’d felt on that first day, a week ago, when he’d found out his life had been changed. Nothing made any sense, and things could not get any more bizarre . . .

  The next thing he knew, the blond woman had grabbed him by the hand and was dragging him through the secretary’s office and out into the hall. ‘‘Come on!’’ she sighed, thoroughly exasperated.

  The last thing Grant saw of MacDugall’s office was a security camera over the door, swiveling to follow him.

  Swell.

  This was just the best plan ever.

  The blond woman led Grant to the elevator area—past the secretarial pool, none of whom seemed to care very much about the sirens— and brandished a screwdriver from one of her pockets. The light above the doors indicated that this car was currently on the fifth floor and going down.

  She wedged the flat-head between the doors, prying them open. Then she looked back and winked at Grant. ‘‘See ya at the bottom,’’ she said merrily. She stepped off the ledge and fell straight down into the empty shaft.

  Grant’s breath caught in his throat, not believing what he’d just seen. Was this woman insane?